These Shoes Were Made for End Times

Two poems by Alyza Taguilaso

These Shoes Were Made for End Times

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Demonic Possession Secondary to Femoral Fracture

No one is allowed to speak
of the dictator’s wife
in ways not flattering. This information was procured
by our best agents and shoe-shine boys. How, in the mid-seventies, she fell
and fractured her right hip – only slightly so – non-
displaced, the orthopedic surgeon called it, needing
no direct intervention. But causing enough crack
of bone that the devil himself managed to sneak in – tendrils
and black soup, mixing itself with her marrow. How else
do you explain all the atrocities committed hereafter?
All those bare-footed workers buried alive
in scaffolding as though in sacrifice to some hungry creature
and its three-thousand feet. Steadfast in making its way
to hell. Even the ghosts refuse to whisper
through their concrete coffins.

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